I cannot believe that the last time I updated was well over a month ago–I apologize for my long absence from the MPA blog scene! I am currently in my fifth week of tax internship at the Houston PricewaterhouseCoopers and, believe it or not, just getting a bit more used to a full workday schedule. That is the reason I thought of this lunch series that allows me to offer a quick update of my internship life.

Since I have so much to update, let me just start from the beginning. Soon after (I mean a day, really!) the accelerated semester ended on February 13, I drove down with two friends after a frenzied evening of sleepless packing. On February 16, I was on a brief flight to Dallas for PwC’s week-long intern training. The training was held in the DFW Hyatt Regency, and we barely left the hotel the whole week due to scheduling. Forty-five interns in total attended the training, and everyone was from a Texas school, though not everyone was going to an internship site within Texas. Actually, we had quite a few interns going to New York, one going to the DC area, and another going to the Atlanta office.

Not surprisingly, the training included classes on familiarization with the technology used in the firm and reviewing some useful tax concepts. But personally, I think the most significant part of the training was to get to know my fellow interns and to understand the PwC values. It might sound cheesy, but if I consider this internship the start of my future career, it should be important to me that the firm’s values and mine align. In short, the training went by in a flash, and the materials we’ve learned were abundant–I have a three-ring binder full of notes to prove it!

The picture was taken on that Thursday evening when all the interns and instructors went to GameWorks for a relaxing evening. The three beautiful ladies in the picture are Emily Parry (Baylor – Houston), Amy Pho (Baylor – Dallas), and Shelley Tatum (Texas A&M – Dallas).

All right, this is it for my lunch update! More will come very soon!